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I had to stop reading midway through the Ryan Howard section because I couldn't handle the author bashing Amaro's understanding of stats while saying things like:

Over the course of his career, Ryan Howard’s defensive Wins Above Replacement is -11.8. You don’t need to understand the fancy math that goes into calculating dWAR to understand this: Howard has cost his team nearly 12 wins on defense alone above and beyond what you might expect from a warm Darin Ruf-like body fished out of Lehigh Valley.

That and the article tended to ramble up until I stopped reading. It's a hit piece that almost anyone at a baseball site like THT or Fangraphs could've written better.

Because Flags Fly Forever, I suspect people would forgive the GM if they had actually won back-to-back World Titles in 2008-09; A repeat covers a trrue multiude of sins. Sadly, the Phillies outplaed hte Yankees in everything except "timing". It's not often in October where your team crushes 11 home runs in 6 games, holds the other team to more than 100 OPS pts lower than their regilar season, and still goes down. The Phils were on a run of 15-4 over the 08-09 postseason until they became so unclutch against the $#%^@!*& Yankees.

Over the course of his career, Ryan Howard’s defensive Wins Above Replacement is -11.8. You don’t need to understand the fancy math that goes into calculating dWAR to understand this: Howard has cost his team nearly 12 wins on defense alone above and beyond what you might expect from a warm Darin Ruf-like body fished out of Lehigh Valley.

If there's a better way to present defensive ratings I'd love to see it, and I think so would Sean Forman. You're damned if you do and damned if you don't.

Show defensive WAR as runs above/below average and somebody will complain about how dumb you have to be to show Derek Jeter as a worse defender than Greg Luzinski or Adam Dunn.

Add in position adjustment (as is currently done) and you get the above. Never mind that if Ruf is an average 1B and plays there for 7-8 years, he'll have a negative dWAR as well (though probably not -11.8).

Though I really really want to love this piece, I think the Murphy one in the other thread is more effective - it's direct, without all of these digressions. The easy way to tell the story of the Amaro era is to simply list the players he has acquired and the prices he has paid.

This is a bit digressive and doesn't really get at the heart of the story: the Phils choosing Amaro over Arbuckle. The latter was a (maybe the) major factor in acquiring all the good players during the Wade era, and the major league and minor league scouting has been terrible since. I can't think of a single non-star player (Halladay, Lee, Pence, Oswalt, Papelbon) who they've added in four years who was brought into the organization post-Gillick who has been a positive contribution. Maybe Eric Kratz? M. Young?

If there's a better way to present defensive ratings I'd love to see it, and I think so would Sean Forman. You're damned if you do and damned if you don't.

Show defensive WAR as runs above/below average and somebody will complain about how dumb you have to be to show Derek Jeter as a worse defender than Greg Luzinski or Adam Dunn.

Add in position adjustment (as is currently done) and you get the above. Never mind that if Ruf is an average 1B and plays there for 7-8 years, he'll have a negative dWAR as well (though probably not -11.8).

I'd say that instead of having oWar and dWar (each of which includes the position adjustment, so you can't just add them together), have unadjusted oWar, unadjusted dWar, and pWar (or whatever), which is just the position adjustment. Then A + B + C can equal the total.

Naturally everyone now claims that Amaro should have seen this coming, but he was far from the only person who seriously thought that the Phillies were going to bounce back this year. I bet at least half their fans thought the same exact thing, because I saw some on this site make the same claim, and of course big-mouthed Jimmy Rollins couldn't keep his piehole shut before the season started, though you don't hear much from him now.

My son and I went to Citzens Bank Park last week twice to see the Cubs play at the Phillies. I thought they had remarkably large crowds for games involving two sub .500 teams. I don't think love of the Phillies in the area is down much. Now the 76ers, there is a team that you have to search wide and far to find any sort of gear, etc.

My son and I went to Citzens Bank Park last week twice to see the Cubs play at the Phillies. I thought they had remarkably large crowds for games involving two sub .500 teams. I don't think love of the Phillies in the area is down much. Now the 76ers, there is a team that you have to search wide and far to find any sort of gear, etc.

FWIW, they're down 6,000 fans per game. That's the second biggest attendance decrease in baseball, ahead of only the Marlins. They're 6th overall in attendance, but that's still a pretty big one year drop.

I think that Amaro is getting a lot of criticism that he doesn't necessarily deserve on this site. I'm not the biggest Amaro fan in the world by any stretch, but the fact of the matter is that he inherited a team that won the WS.

He made a series of creative and opportunistic trades and actually improved that team he inherited. Now, he ran into some poor luck in the playoffs in '10 and '11, but he successfully identified a window of opportunity and went for it wholeheartedly. I think that's a plus for him.

The Howard contract was a big miss, but all his other mistakes have been relatively small ones, and his moves to bring in Lee (twice), and improve the team to it's '11 peak were fairly good.

If there's a better way to present defensive ratings I'd love to see it, and I think so would Sean Forman.

I'd start by calling it dWAA. This should help reduce the Rufian comparisons. (I note fangraphs has also added it but they just label it ...hmmm, can't load fg at the moment but something like "field + pos."

I would also probably pull the positional adjustment out of oWAR so that the two add up to WAR but I know that would cause some griping. I think it's cleaner -- here's how good a hitter this guy is, here's how good a defender this guy is. Position doesn't affect offense per se, position is a measure of defensive ability.

But really, I'd probably recommend leaving things as is. Give WAR a few years without any substantial tinkering.

Though I really really want to love this piece, I think the Murphy one in the other thread is more effective - it's direct, without all of these digressions.

They serve different audiences and purposes. The digressions you take issue with are actually what I enjoy so much, both as a reader and as someone who knows how this piece is being pitched: it does a pretty great job of quickly giving thumbnail explanations for a non-specialist (and perhaps even non-baseball fan) reader of certain stats and their meanings to ground him, but it's the historical background that really fleshes this piece out. There's an actual thesis to Faris' piece, which is that Amaro isn't some freakishly anomaly but rather the obvious and logical stylistic heir to his mentor Pat Gillick. Only without Gillick's superior intuition, savvy or long-range planning ability. And once the luck started to turn, those flaws became crippling. Hence the word "hapless" in the piece's sub-hed, which indeed is the perfect word choice.

Murphy's piece is great, but its particular value is in the audience it reaches: people who read the sports section of the city's Joe Lunchpail tabloid. This is more of long-form 'magazine' piece. I also like the author's writing style...a bit digressive, perhaps, but then that just reminds me of my own style.

There's an actual thesis to Faris' piece, which is that Amaro isn't some freakishly anomaly but rather the obvious and logical stylistic heir to his mentor Pat Gillick. Only without Gillick's superior intuition, savvy or long-range planning ability. And once the luck started to turn, those flaws became crippling. Hence the word "hapless" in the piece's sub-hed, which indeed is the perfect word choice.

Absolutely. The points about how Gillick got very lucky in some ways instead of being the Gallant to Amaro's Goofus were well said.

On the Phils, dynasties only survive if the team can continue to produce some impact prospects. If the Yanks don't develop a Cano (along with Gardner, some useful pitchers and some prospects to trade), they would have been in trouble before now. And even for the Yanks, that prospect pipeline seems to be drying up and it looks like they will have to survive on a meager FA market and eating big contracts for the next few years at least.

Amaro's made a number of mistakes but mainly it's just Howard. Hamels, Lee, Utley, Halladay -- anybody have major objections to those. Papelbon is an overpay and Rollins needs to bounce back to decent next year but you can find similar mistakes on most other high payroll teams too. The Phils have developed little in terms of prospects (took Brown long enough) but then the ones that he traded away haven't come back to haunt him either (or am I forgetting somebody)? I don't see a set of obvious alternative moves that put them at the top. Extending Howard was a massive mistake but if they let him walk after 2011, that just puts them into the Pujols/Fielder bidding. Both better long-term bets than Howard but neither performing at a level that would have vaulted the Phils into winners.

Following the 2008 WS, they pretty much stood pat. Not a lot else to do as everybody was under contract.

At the 2009 trade deadline they get 1.5 years of Cliff Lee (and Ben Francisco) for absolutely nothing of value. They return to the WS. Nothing to complain about there.

After 2009, they still have all their major talent under contract. They sign Polanco who was good in 2010 and average in 2011 -- all told he gave them 5.5 WAR for about $16.5 M, a good deal.

They traded a bunch of guys for Halladay. Taylor was supposed to be a stud but wasn't. d'Arnaud might finally turn into something 5 years later. They extend Halladay. It's hard to argue with this one.

They stupidly panic and trade Cliff Lee for a bunch of guys who turn into nothing. Amaro's 2nd biggest mistake in my opinion.

Then the biggest mistake of them all as Howard is extended in April 2010.

They make a deadline deal for Oswalt who pitches lights out down the stretch. They give up some talent in this one -- Happ is a 5th starter and, 4 years later, Gose might pay off (for the Jays). Overall Oswalt gives them 5.5 WAR for about $20 M, not a terrible outcome. The 2010 teams makes it to the NLCS, no embarrassment. But if they had held onto Lee, they wouldn't have had to acquire Oswalt, they aybe could have swung a different deadline deal. Maybe they make the WS.

Once again, no major player is lost to free agency. They sign Cliff Lee (more below). At this point, all of his moves have worked very well in the short-term, a very good job of big market GMing frankly. But the Howard extension is looming on the horizon and the team is now pretty old.

In 2011, a deadline deal for Pence ... who is great down the stretch. Not good the next year but still 3 WAR for about $12 M. But they may have given up real talent in this one.

This team wins 102 regular season games, what's not to like? They crap out to the Cards in the first round.

This offseason he has to make a call on Ibanez, Oswalt and Rollins. Two right, one likely wrong. Rollins gave him an average 2012 but has not been good this year and even if he bounces back next year, this will have been a bad deal. Usually I would probably say there weren't many other SS options but we've actually seen quite a few SS change hands over the last two years.

He extends Hamels -- none of us ever want to extend a pitcher for more than 5 years but he'd been excellent to date and was excellent in 2012.

Nothing much works in 2012 so they deal pieces -- Victorino, Pence, Blanton. I don't know if they got anybody good in return, will leave that to the prospect mavens. But clearly dealing these guys was a good idea by standard BBTF thinking. Year 1 of the the Howard extension is out of the way and it's off to a tragic start at -1.1 WAR. It didn't get much better this year.

For 2012, about all you can do is speculate about deals that could have been made to start the rebuild earlier -- Halladay, Lee, Utley.

2013 is best not discussed. A bad trade for Revere, a desperate grab of Young, no deadline trades.

So ... it's kind of amazing how one absolutely massive mistake can wreck what are, for the most part, a series of good moves.

Looking back, prior to this year, I'm not sure how much differently Amaro could have done things. I'm not sure when the contracts were negotiated but I think that when he took over, the core were already all under long-term contracts. He could either deal his current best players to get younger (assuming others wanted to take on those contracts) or he could play the hand he was dealt. Gillick dealt him a really good hand, at least at the ML level, so he played it and that worked out quite well.

I have no idea what Gillick left him in the minors though. Certainly 5 years later very little of what they had in the minors has paid off in the majors for anybody. Brown might have produced more WAR this year than everybody they've traded away so far. Near as I can tell, Amaro hasn't improved the system and maybe it's even worse.

Once you take into account that the minor-league talent wasn't going to pay off, I'm not sure there are many GMs who would have done a better job here. In that scenario, you've got little alternative but to ride this core as long as you can. Howard a massive and easily avoidable mistake. Rollins a small and easily avoidable mistake. I'm OK with the Utley extension under the circumstances.

Cliff Lee? Interesting. The contract takes him through age 36. That's usually a pretty good time to bail out of a long-term contract with a pitcher (35 would be better most likley). He has been excellent but not dominant in 2012-13 and he's paid to be dominant. Still, issues about pitcher WAR to the side, he's put up 17 WAR so far. Give him a couple of average-ish seasons and you're pretty much at the break-even point. I'd do my best to trade him this offseason, eating some money to get talent, but this contract too looks like it's gonna be just fine. The Halladay extension didn't work out but what a great season. It still comes out to 9 WAR for $60 which is not a disaster.

Amaro's legacy looks a lot better if you can just look past the worst, dumbest extension probably in MLB history. Through 2011, which is when things would have started falling apart anyway, he did a quite good job of supplementing what Gillick left him. But he seems to have established he's not a GM you want in charge of a rebuild.

Because Flags Fly Forever, I suspect people would forgive the GM if they had actually won back-to-back World Titles in 2008-09; A repeat covers a trrue multiude of sins. Sadly, the Phillies outplaed hte Yankees in everything except "timing". It's not often in October where your team crushes 11 home runs in 6 games, holds the other team to more than 100 OPS pts lower than their regilar season, and still goes down. The Phils were on a run of 15-4 over the 08-09 postseason until they became so unclutch against the $#%^@!*& Yankees.

The Yankees scored 28 runs in the last four games of the 2009 World Series (8,7,6,7). Leave Cliff Lee on the Indians, and the Yankees sweep.

#21 is a nice analysis, and shows that facts can be made to fit almost any narrative (that's almost move for move the same story told in Amaroland), but again, absolutely nothing Amaro did that was positive from 2009 to 2011 came without a significant price (money or prospects). The prospects have not been good, and you might say that's been one area where Amaro has been a plus GM (most teams hoard prospects far too much), but it's not hard when you have a deep system and lots of money to make 3 and 4-1 deals for expensive players and cover the contacts.

The core of the Phillies that won in 2008 was so solid (and relatively cheap!) that it would be impossible to be given a blank check AND the ability to deal top-5 prospects repeatedly, add them to that team, and not do well. The Phils were stacked with talent, money, and a very deep farm system in 2008, and now have none of that (ML team is bad, farm system is weak, and they are up against the luxury tax). I don't see any way that you can actually look at the state of the team from finances on down to the draft in 2008 and 2013 and come to the conclusion that "he did quite a good job supplementing what Gillick left him."

The reason why the offseason the last two years has been terrible is because Amaro had no money to work with (largely his own fault) and they have drafted terribly since he got there (actually, since Arbuckle left). The last two offseasons matter so much because they show what he can do with limited resources.

Building on the final point of that post, Amaro's two biggest weaknesses are (1) his ability to identify and acquire undervalued assets, and (2) roster construction. Those two traits are absolutely critical when you have to fill multiple holes and don't have a lot of spare payroll to throw around - the situation that Amaro has faced the last two offseasons.

How bad was Amaro's haul last winter? Amaro had holes to fill at 3B, an outfield corner, the #5 rotation slot, and the bullpen. He spent approximately $19M of his 2013 payroll on five veterans: Michael Young, Delmon Young, Chad Durbin, John Lannan, and Mike Adams. The five have combined for -2.6 bWAR so far this season.

Meanwhile, in Tampa Bay, Andrew Friedman's team had a roughly comparable set of needs and acquired the following 5 players:

Papelbon is an overpay and Rollins needs to bounce back to decent next year but you can find similar mistakes on most other high payroll teams too...

The Phils have developed little in terms of prospects (took Brown long enough) but then the ones that he traded away haven't come back to haunt him either....

Extending Howard was a massive mistake but if they let him walk after 2011, that just puts them into the Pujols/Fielder bidding....

At the 2009 trade deadline they get 1.5 years of Cliff Lee (and Ben Francisco) for absolutely nothing of value...

They traded a bunch of guys for Halladay. Taylor was supposed to be a stud but wasn't. d'Arnaud might finally turn into something 5 years later....

They stupidly panic and trade Cliff Lee for a bunch of guys who turn into nothing.....

They make a deadline deal for Oswalt who pitches lights out down the stretch. They give up some talent in this one -- Happ is a 5th starter and, 4 years later, Gose might pay off (for the Jays)....

But if they had held onto Lee, they wouldn't have had to acquire Oswalt...

At this point, all of his moves have worked very well in the short-term, a very good job of big market GMing frankly...

In 2011, a deadline deal for Pence ... who is great down the stretch. Not good the next year but still 3 WAR for about $12 M. But they may have given up real talent in this one.

This team wins 102 regular season games, what's not to like? They crap out to the Cards in the first round.

He extends Hamels -- none of us ever want to extend a pitcher for more than 5 years but he'd been excellent to date and was excellent in 2012...

Nothing much works in 2012 so they deal pieces -- Victorino, Pence, Blanton. I don't know if they got anybody good in return....

Amaro's legacy looks a lot better if you can just look past the worst, dumbest extension probably in MLB history. ...

Walt, this analysis is very poor because it's so heavily results oriented,. It reads as if you think Amaro has a magic 8 Ball that tells him exactly which prospects would fail and which acquisitions will work out. And that matter how much he overpays, or gives away, his dumb moves that worked out must have been because of his insightful brilliance instead of pure luck. Given Amaro's history, insight and brilliance seemed to be big dogs to dumb luck in being involved in his best moves.

Prospects have value at the time of the trade. Even if they crap out 5 years later it doesn't mean the trader gave up nothing. If they were valuable enough to get Cliff Lee, they were valuable enough to get a other valuable players back in trade.

This analysis paints Amaro's options into little corners that don't exist. Such as forgiving obvious mistakes that wasted team resources because "other high payroll teams make similar mistakes". If the Phillies don't extend Howard 2 years early doesn't mean they can't extend him later at a better price. After his 2010 and 2011 regular seasons it's not likely any team was giving him $125M for 5 years. And if they did, the Phillies should have been happy to take the draft pick, Fielder or Pujols were not the only possible replacements, a good GM could have found a better, cheaper replacement for Howard without spending megabucks.

Actually, I think this condemns Amaro even more. He has completely failed to build an organization that can develop talent. So prospects worth enough to get Cliff Lee are less valuable to the Phillies because Amaro coudldn't identify the in house talent to develop those prospects. It means that the failure is less in dealing for prospoects, and more a failure to create an organization that can develop them.

The Yankees scored 28 runs in the last four games of the 2009 World Series (8,7,6,7). Leave Cliff Lee on the Indians, and the Yankees sweep.
Huh? The Phillies scored 20 runs in those 4 games, and should have scored many more; their OPS was just as good, but their timing was worse.
The Phils scored 6 and 8 runs in Lee's starts. You saying the Yankees would have for sure scored more if anyone else was pitching?

Folks, thanks for reposting the article and for the comments, suggestions and criticisms. I admit the Ruf sentence is problematic but it was the result of me (total non-specialist in the field) trying to grapple with dozens of posts across Fangraphs, BR and others that in many cases disagree with one another and then trying to interpret those findings for an audience of readers and casual fans that have literally never heard of this stuff. My understanding is that the defensive component of WAR is calculated against the league average at the position (plus a position adjustment), but as Sean Forman writes, "Unlike with batting, it's generally believed that the replacement level fielder is around league average." To me the basic source of confusion is labeling a calculation whose main input is league average as "defensive wins above replacement" since replacement level is different than league average. Leaving aside what Ruf's capabilities at first base are or are not (and we don't have the SS really to determine that yet) am I not right in saying that Howard's -11.8 represents wins lost in comparison to a bench player/Lehigh Valley filler IF as Sean argues, we can assume that those guys are league average? I'm happy to be wrong and to admit the mistake but would argue we have a labeling problem.

From what I can glean from all of these discussions, reasonable people do in fact disagree about some of the components of calculating WAR. My point was not to demonstrate my own superior understanding of it but rather to argue that in forsaking all use of these components in their own decision making, the Amaro front office has put itself at a massive competitive disadvantage vis-a-vis Tampa, Toronto and others. Amaro doesn't himself need to fully understand the metrics or even be able to explain them, as much as he needs to hire people who can and give them some input into strategic decision making. It's the same way that a Republican strategist would not have needed to understand the precise mechanics of Nate Silver's state-by-state win percentages as much as that strategist would need to a) know that such calculations are out there and have had predictive value in the past and b) hire someone who can either act on them or produce a credible set of alternate calculations with equal or better predictive value. The failure to take advantage of publicly-available data and analysis is not only inexcusable in a billion-dollar operation like the Phillies, it also led in a straight line to things like the Howard extension and the Papelbon contract, both of which have reduced Philly's flexibility and competitiveness.

Anyway thanks for reading. If anyone is ever in Chicago I'd be happy to argue/cry about the Phillies over a beer. I could easily write another 7,200 words.

am I not right in saying that Howard's -11.8 represents wins lost in comparison to a bench player/Lehigh Valley filler IF as Sean argues, we can assume that those guys are league average?

The problem with your statement is the position adjustment part. The 11.8 is how many wins Howard loses compared to an average defensive player overall - not to the average defensive first-baseman. Even an average defensive first-baseman will have a negative dWAR because of the position adjustment - he's "worse" than the overall average defensive player.

This confusion is why I was saying earlier that I think the position adjustment should be taken out of dWAR (and oWAR) and listed separately.